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ADDRESS 



OF 



PRESIDENT WILSON 



AT THE 



FIFTIETH 
ANNIVERSARY DINNER 



OF THE 



MANHATTAN CLUB 



(BILTMORE HOTEL) 
NEW YORK CITY 
NOVEMBER 4, 1915 




WASHINGTON 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 

1915 






D. of D. 
NOV 9 1915 



\ - 



ADDRESS 



Mr. Toastmaster and Gentlemen : 

I warmly felicitate the club upon the completion of fifty years of 
successful and interesting life. Club life may be made to mean a 
great deal to those who laiow how to use it. I have no doubt that 
to a great many of you has come genuine stimulation in the associa- 
tions of this place and that as the years have multiplied you have 
seen more and more the useful ends which may be served by organi- 
zations of this sort. 

But I have not come to speak wholly of that, for there are others 
of your own members who can speak of the club with a knowledge 
and an intelligence which no one can have who has not been inti- 
mately associated with it. Men band themselves together for the 
sake of the association no doubt, but also for something greater 
and deeper than that, — because they are conscious of common inter- 
ests lying outside their business occupations, because they are mem- 
bers of the same community and in frequent intercourse find mutual 
stimulation and a real maximum of vitality and power. I shall as- 
sume that here around the dinner table on this memorable occasion 
our talk should properly turn to the wide and common interests which 
are most in our thoughts, whether they be the interests of the com- 
munity or of the nation. 

A year and a half ago our thought would have been almost alto- 
gether of great domestic questions. They are many and of vital 
consequence. We must and shall address ourselves to their solution 
with diligence, firmness, and self-possession, notwithstanding we 
find ourselves in the midst of a world disturbed by great disaster 
and ablaze with terrible war; but our thought is now inevitably of 
new things about which formerly we gave ourselves little concern. 
We are thinking now chiefly of our relations with the rest of the 
world, — not our commercial relations, — about those we have thought 
and planned always, — but about our political relations, our du4;ies 
as an individual and independent force in the world to ourselves, 
our neighbors, and the world itself. 

Our principles are well known. It is not necessary to avow them 
again. We believe in political liberty and founded our great govern- 
ment to obtain it, the liberty of men and of peoples, — of men to 
choose their own lives and of peoples to choose their own allegiance. 

12856—15 (3) 



Our ambition, also, all the world has knowledge of. It is not only 
to be free and prosperous ourselves, but also to be the friend and 
thoughtful partisan of those who are free or who desire freedom the 
world over. If we have had aggressive purposes and covetous ambi- 
tions, they were the fruit of our thoughtless youth as a nation and we 
have put them aside. We shall, I confidently believe, never again take 
another foot of territory by conquest. We shall never in any circum- 
stances seek to make an independent people subject to our dominion; 
because we believe, we passionately believe, in the right of every 
people to choose their own allegiance and be free of masters alto- 
gether. For ourselves we wish nothing but the full liberty of self- 
development ; and with ourselves in this great matter we associate all 
the peoples of our own hemisphere. We wish not only for the United 
States but for them the fullest freedom of independent growth and 
of action, for we know that throughout this hemisphere the same 
aspirations are everywhere being worked out, under diverse con- 
ditions but with the same impulse and ultimate object. 

All this is very clear to us and will, I confidently predict, become 
more and more clear to the whole world as the great processes of the 
future unfold themselves. It is with a full consciousness of such 
principles and such ambitions that we are asking ourselves at the 
present time what our duty is with regard to the armed force of the 
Nation. Within a year we have witnessed what we did not believe 
possible, a great European conflict involving many of the greatest 
nations of the world. The influences of a great war are everywhere 
in the air. All Europe is embattled. Force everywhere speaks out 
with a loud and imperious voice in a titanic struggle of governments, 
and from one end of our own dear country to the other men are ask- 
ing one another what our own force is, how far we are prepared to 
maintain ourselves against any interference with our national action 
or development. 

In no man's mind, I am sure, is there even raised the question of 
the wilful use of force on our part against any nation or any people. 
No matter what military or naval force the United States might 
develop, statesmen throughout the whole w^orld might rest assured 
that we were gathering that force, not for attack in any quarter, not 
for aggression of any kind, not for the satisfaction of any political or 
international ambition, but merely to make sure of our own security.. 
We have it in mind to be prepared, not for war, but only for de- 
fense; and with the thought constantly in our minds that the prin- 
ciples we hold most dear can be achieved by the slow processes of his- 
tory only in the kindly and wholesome atmosphere of peace, and not 
by the use of hostile force. The mission of America in the world is 
essentially a mission of peace and good w^ill among men. She has be- 
come the home and asylum of men of all creeds and races. Within 



her hospita1)le borders they have found homes and congenial associa- 
tions and freedom and a wide and cordial welcome, and they have be- 
come part of the bone and sinew and spirit of America itself. Amer- 
ica has been made up out of the nations of the world and is the friend 
of the nations of the world. 

But we feel justified in preparing ourselves to vindicate our right 
to independent and unmolested action by making the force that is in 
us ready for assertion. 

And we know that we can do this in a way that will be itself an 
illustration of the American spirit. In accordance with our American 
traditions we want and shall work for only an army adequate to the 
constant and legitimate uses of times of international peace. But we 
do want to feel that there is a great body of citizens who have 
received at least the most rudimentary and necessary forms of mili- 
tary training; that they will be ready to form themselves into a 
fighting force at the call of the nation; and that the nation has the 
munitions and supplies with which to equip them without delay 
should it be necessary to call them into action. We wish to supply 
them with the training they need, and we think we can do so without 
calling them at any time too long away from their civilian pursuits. 

It is with this idea, with this conception, in mind that the plans 
have been made which it will be my privilege to lay before the Con- 
gress at its next session. That plan calls for only such an increase 
in the regular Army of the United States as experience has proved 
to be required for the performance of the necessary duties of the 
Army in the Philippines, in Hawaii, in Porto Rico, upon the borders 
of the United States, at the coast fortifications, and at the military 
posts of the interior. For the rest, it calls for the training within the 
next three years of a force of 400,000 citizen soldiers to be raised in 
annual contingents of 133,000, who would be asked to enlist for three 
years with the colors and three years on furlough, but who during 
their three years of enlistment with the colors would not be organized 
as a standing force but would be expected merely to undergo inten- 
sive training for a very brief period of each year. Their training 
would take place in immediate association with the organized units 
of the regular Army. It would have no touch of the amateur about 
it, neither would it exact of the volunteers more than they could give 
in any one year from their civilian pursuits. 

And none of this would be done in such a way as in the slightest 
degree to supersede or subordinate our present serviceable and effi- 
cient National Guard. On the contrary, the National Guard itself 
would be used as part of the instrumentality by which training 
would be given the citizens who enlisted under the new conditions, 
and I should hope and expect that the legislation by which all this 
w^ould be accomplished would put the National Guard itself upon 



a better and more permanent footing than it has ever been before, 
giving it not only the recognition which it deserves, but a more 
definite support from the national government and a more definite 
connection with the military organization of the nation. 

AVhat we all wish to accomplish is that the forces of the nation 
should indeed be part of the nation and not a separate professional 
force, and the chief cost of the system would not be in the enlistment 
or in the training of the men, but in the providing of ample equip- 
ment in case it should be necessary to call all forces into the field. 

Moreover, it has been American policy time out of mind to look 
to the Navy as the first and chief line of defense. The Navy of the 
United States is already a very great and efficient force. Not rapidly, 
but slowly, with careful attention, our naval force has been developed 
until the Navy of the United States stands recognized as one of the 
most efficient and notable of the modern time. All that is needed in 
order to bring it to a point of extraordinary force and efficiency as 
compared with the other navies of the world is that we should hasten 
our pace in the policy we have long been pursuing, and that chief of 
all we should have a definite policy of development, not made from 
year to year but looking well into the future and planning for a 
definite consummation. We can and should profit in all that we do 
by the experience and example that have been made obvious to us by 
the military and naval events of the actual present. It is not merely 
a matter of building battleships and cruisers and submarines, but 
also a matter of making sure that w^e shall have the adequate equip- 
ment of men and munitions and supplies for the vessels we build 
and intend to build. Part of our problem is the problem of what I 
may call the mobilization of the resources of the nation at the proper 
time if it should ever be necessary to mobilize them for national de- 
fense. We shall study efficiency and adequate equipment as care- 
fully as we shall study the number and size of our ships, and I be- 
lieve that the plans already in part made public by the Navy Depart- 
ment are plans which the whole nation can approve with rational 
enthusiasm. 

No thoughtful man feels any panic haste in this matter. The 
country is not threatened from any quarter. She stands in friendly 
relations with all the world. Her resources are known and her 
self-respect and her capacity to care for her own citizens and her 
own rights. There is no fear amongst us. Under the new-world 
conditions we have become thoughtful of the things which all reason- 
able men con.sider necessary for security and self-defense on the 
part of every nation confronted with the great enterprise of human 
liberty and independence. That is all. 

Is the plan wo propose sane and reasonable and suited to the 
needs of the hoiii-^ Does it not conform to the ancient traditions of 



America ? Has any better plan been proposed than this programme 
that we now place before the country? In it there is no pride of 
opinion. It represents the best professional and expert judgment of 
the country. But I am not so much interested in programmes as 
I am in safeguarding at every cost the good faith and honor of the 
country. If men differ with me in this vital matter, I shall ask 
them to make it clear how far and in what way they are interested 
in making the permanent interests of the country safe against dis- 
turbance. 

In the fulfillment of the programme I propose I shall ask for the 
hearty support of the country, of the rank and file of America, of men 
of all shades of political opinion. For my position in this important 
matter is different from that of the private individual who is free to 
speak his own thoughts and to risk his own opinions in this matter. 
We are here dealing with things that are vital to the life of America 
itself. In doing this I have tried to purge my heart of all personal 
and selfish motives. For the time being, I speak as the trustee and 
guardian of a nation's rights, charged with the duty of speaking for 
that nation in matters involving her sovereignty, — a nation too big 
and generous to be exacting and yet courageous enough to defend 
its rights and the liberties of its people wherever assailed or invaded. 
I would not feel that I w\as discharging the solemn obligation I owe 
the country were I not to speak in terms of the deepest solemnity of 
the urgency and necessity of preparing ourselves to guard and pro- 
tect the rights and privileges of our people, our sacred heritage of the 
fathers who struggled to make us an independent nation. 

The only thing within our own borders that has given us grave con- 
cern in recent months has been that voices have been raised in 
America professing to be the voices of Americans which were not 
indeed and in truth American, but which spoke alien sympathies, 
which came from men who loved other countries better than they 
loved America, men who were partisans of other causes than that of 
America and had forgotten that their chief and only allegiance was 
to the great government under which they live. These voices have not 
been many, but they have been very loud and very clamorous. They 
have proceeded from a few who were bitter and who were grievously 
misled. America has not opened its doors in vain to men and women 
out of other nations. The vast majority of those who have come to 
take advantage of her hospitality have united their spirits with hers 
as well as their fortunes. These men who speak alien sympathies are 
not their spokesmen but are the spokesmen of small groups whom it 
is high time that the nation should call to a reckoning. The chief 
thing necessary in America in order that she should let all the world 
know that she is prepared to maintain her own great position is that 



8 

the real voice of the nation should sound forth unmistakably and in 
majestic volume, in the deep unison of a common, unhesitating na- 
tional feeling. I do not doubt that upon the first occasion, upon the 
first opportunitj^, upon the first definite challenge, that voice will 
speak forth in tones which no man can doubt and with commands 
which no man dare gainsay or resist. 

May I not say, while I am speaking of this, that there is another 
danger that we should guard against? We should rebuke not only 
manifestations of racial feeling here in America where there should 
be none, but also every manifestation of religious and sectarian 
antagonism. It does not become America that within her borders, 
where every man is free to follow the dictates of his conscience and 
worship God as he pleases, men should raise the cry of church against 
church. To do that is to strike at the very spirit and heart of 
America. We are a God-fearing people. We agree to differ about 
methods of worship, but we are united in believing in Divine Provi- 
dence and in worshiping the God of Nations. We are the champions 
of religious right here and everywhere that it may be our privilege 
to give it our countenance and support. The government is con- 
scious of the obligation and the nation is conscious of the obliga- 
tion. Let no man create divisions where there are none. 

Here is the nation God has builded by our hands. What shall we 
do with it? Wlio is there who does not stand ready at all times to 
act in her behalf in a spirit of devoted and disinterested patriotism? 
We are yet only in the youth and first consciousness of our power. 
The day of our country's life is still but in its fresh morning. Let us 
lift our eyes to the great tracts of life yet to be conquered in the in- 
terests of righteous peace. Come, let us renew our allegiance to 
America, conserve her strength in its purity, make her chief among 
those who serve mankind, self-reverenced, self-commanded, mistress 
of all forces of quiet counsel, strong above all others in good will and 
the might of invincible justice and right 

o 




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